1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to integrated circuit (IC) chips and more specifically to the detaching of IC chips from the wafer in which they were fabricated in common.
2. Description of the Prior Art
After the end of the manufacture of IC chips on a wafer, the complete wafers must be separated into these individual chips. To this end, the wafers are thinned, glued on carriers, sawed along what are referred to as saw frames with diamond saws, released from the carrier substrate and cleaned. The installations used for the IC fabrication cannot be used for these jobs. Rather, specific installations are required because of the incompatible method steps. The sawn edges that result are rough, and the method produces substantial densities of small particles that arise during sawing. These particles settle on the chips and can be a hinderance in the further use of the chips, for example in large scale integration (LSI) microsystems such as multichip memories (MCMs).